Some advice please - I want to know if I would be considered for Medicine

[MarkC]

Hi everyone,

Well the Good Bit -

I am a Registered Nurse I obtained a Diploma of Higher Ed. Adult Nursing (distinction) and have worked in acute hospitals for 13 years (2 years as a qualified Nurse) - I have performed so well I was promoted to a Charge Nurse after 12 months - I have experience in Hepatology - gastroenterology - General Surgery -Haematology - Oncology - Cardiac surgery and General Medicine. I am also chemotherapy trained and administer cytotoxic medications via all routes (Central and peripheral IV) I can cannulate - take blood and read and aquire ECG's.

I got accepted to the DipHE course as I completed NVQ's Levels 2 and 3 in Direct Care

The Bad bit -

I messed up at school hardly any GCSE's (due to personal issues rather than ability) - I have no A- Levels as yet.


I really wish to study Medicine - I cannot stress enough how much I want this !

1. Would I be considered with this sort of Nursing Qualification and Experience ?

2. Should I undertake A level Chemistry and Human Biology ?

3. Would I also need to do GCSE Maths and English ?

4. Which medical schools are more likely to give me a chance ?

Thanks in advance for your responses I know there are loads of posts like this one.

Mark

[Martigan]

Hi Mark

Here is quiet a good general site, but its not been kept up-to-date. However the wider just is still pretty comprehensive. Medschoolsonline - A Guide to Getting into Medical School in the UK

I'm not the best person to advise you overall, as my knowledge is more focused on the graduate entry process, and now a year or so out of date.
However, on course that is open to you is the KCL GPEP programme which is the Graduate and *Professional* Entry programme. Medicine Graduate/Professional Entry Programme MBBS - Overview - Undergraduate programmes - King's College London : Online prospectus

Other than that its more the options you listed above. But the best course amongst those would he heavily influenced by your on personal circumstances, drivers and attributes.

Good luck! Personally, to me, you look to hare the attributes and drive that Med Schools tend to value, however, they do have a lots of excellent candidates to choose from and limited places.

[MarkC]

@Martigan Thank you so very much for your information - its a great help - as I am 31 I am wondering wether to apply for the KCL GPEP now, sit the UKCAT - see what happens, if unsuccessful then I could reapply next year (And by then I should have 4 A Levels also, as I have tentatively signed up for Chemistry - Human Biology - English Language & Literature & Mathematics) Surely that should help me if i get the required grades !! - FAILING THAT .....I have an unconditional offer for the MSC Nursing starting september 2013 and will get that over 18months - then apply for graduate entry....

.....what is the UKCAT like, I've never ever sat anything of the sort, so I have no Idea?? -

sorry to keep pestering for info..... and again - your post actually made my day !!! thank you

[Giggy]

Hi, you certainly have the experience side of things covered very well, if you can play it right you'll have a very strong personal statement. The academics will vary between individual universities in that some may accept the diploma in place of the others as it is a higher level qualification, others still like specific qualifications.

I don't know much about how nursing qualifications work so you will know better than me whether you're intending to apply for the 4 year or 5 year courses. However with my grad entry application I noticed how much it varies between the Universities. Warwick 4 year for example didn't look at A-levels at all, Nottingham 5 year wanted graduates to also hold AAA at A-level, Sheffield 5 year had some A-level requirements on top of the degree, think it was BBB though placed more emphasis on the UKCAT score whereas Keele 5 year was a lot more personal statement centred. Not sure how any of these have changed though as these specifics were 2 years ago.

It definitely pays to look around the different med school's websites to see what they are looking for, if in any doubt email them and they are normally very happy to advise. As the different schools prioritise different areas of the application looking at these can help to decide where to apply to maximise your chances.

Good luck. :-)

[Martigan]

.....what is the UKCAT like, I've never ever sat anything of the sort, so I have no Idea??

It’s all done on computers in the Pearson test centres around the country (The same ones that you now use for the theory section of the driving exam.) and structured to give an average score of 600. With the highest possible being 900 and the lowest being 300. The part you have to worry about is split into 4 sections

QR - Quantitative Reasoning - Basically GCSE level maths problems taken from day-to-day information.
VR - Verbal reasoning - Which effectively seems to be testing verbal comprehension, but often test how you extract explicitly stated information from a written passage, and separate it out from things that are merely implied.
AR - Analytical Reasoning - Which is about testing pattern recognition - this is a hard bugger as the pattern can be near anything, and while you can work most out given time, in the test you have seconds.
DA - Decision analysis. - Which is about extracting meaning out of coded information - tests your ability to translate, interpret information into the correct context.

It's intended to be a type of IQ test that you can't "cram" for. In that once you are familiar with the test it *should* be down to natural ability.

Others here would argue differently saying you can practice and cram to improve your score, especially the "prep companies" that prey on desperate medic candidates who have money to through at anything they think will improve their chances.

Different people click with it in different ways with the test others just can't get their head around it. Not sure if that's an IQ thing or a personality thing, as I've seen some seemingly bright people do badly and seen some surprisingly good results in unexpected places...

My main grip about the UKCAT is the inconsistency in some of the questions in the QR section. The challenge is not the difficulty of the concepts, but the volume you have to go through. You only have so many seconds a question in which to read and answer it. Some questions are short, so you just pick out X and divide by Y, but on another you might get that you have to add up A, B, C & D then divide that by the sum of X, Y & Z which you then compare against a column 1 of a table and take the comparative number in column 2.

One can be done very quickly the second just can't be done in the time allowed.

The most common book used is one referred to as the 600 Q's book. However I know a lot of people (me included) who freaked out when they just could not physically compute the answers to more than about 50% of the questions in the time allowed, even though the concepts were simple. This was because the book just seemed to contain the most complex of the questions used.

When I then sat the test the first time, after never even having time to complete more than about 50-60% of the QR questions in the book, I didn't get any complex calculations and all were short ones to read, meaning I finished the test (just!) and got 880 for the QR section. However the second time, I did get half a dozen of the monster questions, which brought my QR score down to 790 for that section. But because the test can me taken at any time over several months, to prevent cheating, each test in made up of a random selection of questions from a much larger question bank. So in the QR section especially, depending on the mix of complex vs simple questions you're allocated it can effect your score.

If you are not mathematical, it’s the QR section where practice beyond just familiarisation should make a real difference. Other than that (to me) all you need to do is
a) Work through a book (like the 600Q’s book) to get familiar with the approaches to the questions.
b) Run through the practice tests that you can download from UKCAT, to familiarise with the screen layout and the awful on screen calculator.
c) Have a chill out evening and good night’s sleep the day before the test, so you go in calm and refreshed.

Well that’s my thoughts. But it’s good to get a few other opinions and choose you own path...

[Martigan]

PS I got on the KCL course. - They are a great bunch. But so are the SGUL lot... ;-)

[MarkC]

Thank you very much for the responses !! They have helped me incredibly and have shone some light into what seemed a very long dark tunnel!

Now all I have to do is sit the UKCAT (oh my goodness !! never seen anything as mad all those questions in such little time!) and write a "killer" personal statement *deep breath* I'm so determined - my partner says if I get in to a med school then he will pay all my tuition fees :-D !! now there's a reason to work hard !! lol

Again thank you very much !!

[Martigan]

I wish I had a partner like that. (Though my other half is fantastic!)

The statement is trickier than it sounds, especially for a mature student. Plus its pretty key for KCL.

Do go to a KCL open day and chat with them. As I mentioned above, I don't know the in's and out's for the Professional entry. But if you are applying this year its probably too late, so probably best calling thier admissions staff for a chat. The staff there are very helpful, but also often overloaded closer to the application deadline.

Its a shame that SGUL don't have a similar programme. I held a senior staff position in SGUL's Healthcare faculty (i.e. Nursing, Midwifery, Paramedic, Radiography, Physio and Social Work training) and it was the support and advice of these professionals that helped get me into Medschool. Despite several of my course mates being Nurses, Physios, Pharmacists etc, it was the fact they had degrees that qualified them to apply not their deep healthcare knowledge. SGUL is very into widening participation but, to me, this seems to be a gap in their admissions policy.